2016 projects and digressions

2016 projects and digressions

Hello friends.

I’m afraid I broke a number of promises that I had made to myself at the start of 2015. Those promises included never saying “busy” when someone asks how I am. The other promise was to be more communicative online, i.e. write more than the occasional dry post on Facebook.  I’m not sure I can fix the first promise, but I’m going to have a go at remedying the second. So, what follows will be an update on projects, people I like and general digressions.

PROJECTS

The CORNERS project continues to amaze, surprise and inspire (see – HERE – to find out what it is I’m doing and visit ISIS arts to find out more about the brilliant people I am working with). There are some big changes coming to the Digital Extension. I’m temped to shout ‘Plot Twist’ at this point. But I wont.  Recently I spent time with one of the CORNERS projects ‘In Between‘ In Gdansk, learning about them and their project and working through ways of using the CORNERS Live extension with them. It’s a great project (that’s them in the photo above). Gdansk is an amazingly atmospheric city with a great arts scene. I loved it. Also whilst I was there I was chatting to another one of the CORNERS artists Maciek Salamon (Bird House Gallery) about his band. He translated some of the lyrics to one of his songs for me. It goes something like “Mother, thank you for giving birth to me. But you really shouldn’t have bothered”. Which is both harsh and funny in equal measure.

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I  am also working as an associated Curator of all things creative and digital with Helix Arts. There are a number of projects in development at the moment that I will codename ‘Bausch‘ and ‘Heidegger‘. All will be revealed. But the other thing that we do together is HADADi a bi-monthly get together for all things creative and digital. It’s a great place to meet artists and technologists, and can be a very useful springboard for new projects. You should come to the next one.

The Illuminarium is wrapping up for the time being. This is an ACE funded project I mentored artists Chloe Rodham and Tim Lozinki through and exhibited at Queens Hall in Hexham via my role as Associate Digital Curator with Queens Hall Arts. It’s a great piece of work. When I say mentored I really just mean scratching my beard and asking difficult questions. They were a pleasure to work with and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

There is also the small matter of Short Circuits, an apocalypse proof, solar powered, free p2p file sharing mesh network that I am building in Blyth.. But that really deserves a big project post all of its own. So I will just leave it at that for now. A teaser..

DIGRESSIONS

I’m getting the band back together..

We have about 8 new tracks in various stages of development. I have started using more than two old gameboys to try and fatten the bass out a wee bit. But we still have that ‘several tunes playing at once’ ‘maxi-bleep’ sound going on. We will be looking for gigs late spring onwards.  Yes that is a hint.

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Meine Güte! There is a lot more to share, but I’m out of steam for now. I’m not making any promises, but I’ll post more next week, it should be less me me me and more thoughts on shiny stuff. I’ve been working through No Internet, No Art – A Lunchbytes Anthology, Edited by Melanie Bühler. Reading it in tandem with Roadside Picnic has been a strange experience with lots of remediated thoughts and ideas being formed. Maybe we can talk about that?